From The Ridge - The McCallie Blog

Banner Brock '16, recipient of the Walker Casey Award, delivered the devotional at the Baccalaureate service for the graduating Class of 2016. Mr. Brock will attend Clemson University in the fall. The transcript of his talk is below.

During my time at McCallie, I have grown physically, spiritually, and mentally. I have matured, learned a lot, and really enjoyed myself. We all have. Our years together have flown by, as if everything is moving in fast motion. After all this time of nonstop activity, tonight we all have the opportunity to slow down, to stop for a moment and reflect.

The following is a slightly-abridged version of a speech given by math teacher and Senate advisor Jim Carlone '88 to the Upper School student body on August 26, 2015. The Senate is the student body charged with upholding McCallie's Honor Code, adjudicating guilt and recommending punishment.

One of McCallie's students sign The Book of Honor, a tradition going back two decades. More than 1,000 student and faculty signatures have been collected in the book, as they express their intent and aspiration to abide by the Honor Code.

Good morning. Today, I am going to talk to you for a few minutes about the Honor Code and the Senate. When McCallie alumni are asked what they remember most about their time here, they inevitably choose one of three things: their relationships with their teachers, the bonds they form with their fellow students, and the Honor Code.

The McCallie School Class of 2015 — like most graduating classes in the past 110 years — was made up of an impressive group of young men ready to depart for college and adult life. But for Director of College Guidance Jeff Kurtzman, this group of seniors made a special mark.

At McCallie, athletics is an important tool in a comprehensive educational program

From the Summer 2015 issue of McCallie Magazine

Wesley Brown takes the ball and drives across the left side of the soccer field in the Blue Tornado’s TSSAA state playoff game against Saint Benedict Academy.

The fourth-generation McCallie student moves quickly down the field as his teammates surge forward, and an SBA defender scrambles to keep pace. Brown looks toward the goal, gets past a defender and sends the ball toward the center of the field in front of the net.

Since 1969, I have spent my life in schools, cycling through roughly the same yearly schedule of fall beginnings and summer endings. One might imagine that this routine could become tiresome but for me it never has. As a student and then a teacher, school communities have nourished and fascinated me, providing as they do a template by which to gauge a whole range of human experience. In August of 1986, I entered my first McCallie classroom. I was 21 years old and looked, it would seem, much younger than that. Dean Sholl’s wife, Penny, likes to tell the story of the day I was moving into North Hutch where they lived with two small boys; she offered to help me out, mistaking me for a lost boarder who had arrived on campus a few days early.

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McCallie School

McCallie is an All-Boys Private Boarding School and Day School, a Christian-based College Prep School.McCallie seeks out and accepts boys from all ethnic, racial, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds and places a high value on a diverse student body.